Sam Walton worked hard and became,by trial and much error, the man who
was ready, when the postwar baby boom met consumerism and advertising
science, to sell America everything. Although the supermarket
and discount center had been invented decades before Walton's time,
they were marginal until the broadest public was ready to abandon
neighborhood shops for cheap goods. Even during the Thirties,
several states levied special "chain store taxes" to protect local
businesses.

Some readers, for whom Wal-Mart is the gateway to paradise, or who
might be inspired by the story of Sam's leadership to seek to become
captains of industry, may be attracted to Walton's combination of
brutality and geniality. There's appeal in the raw struggle to dominate
as effectively as Walton has.

Founded in 1962, Wal-Mart became by 1988 the most profitable retailer
in the world, after decades of turf wars with Kresge, Kroger's,
Woolworth's and others. That year Walton managed the largest
privately-owned satellite system in the country, enabling efficient
movement of inventory. By 1992 every Wal-Mart thermostat in the nation
was controlled from Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart is expected to
become the largest corporation in the world by about 2005.

Author Bob Ortega was the Wall
Street Journal's Wal-Mart reporter for five years. His
book is important to Ithaca because Wal-Mart's current bid to occupy
Lansing's Pyramid Mall would scramble local retailing and, as a
regional magnet, spark a 40% traffic increase there.

"Wal-Mart, like any corporation, is merely a machine, an impersonal
construct with one imperative: the profit motive," says Ortega.
Pursuing that motive to the utmost might damage Tompkins County rather
than make life easier here.

Although this book's chapters move chronologically from Walton's
ancestry through his childhood to shopkeeping and empire, one could as
well open it at random, browsing to encounter the lessons it offers.
Right here in the middle, on page 204 for example (an actual random
shot), we find Wal-Mart's "Made in USA" promotion unravelling as the
public realizes that most Wal-Mart goods were actually imported by the
U.S. companies which sell to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart long resisted stockholder resolutions to end contracts
involving slave labor (allegations by China's Harry Wu) and
mistreatment of women, minorities, and children as young as seven. Even
now their labor "code" is weak and feebly enforced. Commonplace
practices of 14-hour days, forced overtime, locked bathrooms, violation
of minimum wages (if any), firing or killing union organizers,
beatings, and rapes keep Wal-Mart's prices low ("Breaking the Code"
chapter 15).

Even domestically, Wal-Mart was forced by federal court order to
declare themselves an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer
(NYT 4/20/93). The harsh truth is that, since shopping is voting, we
are slave owners when we buy the products of slave labor.

Nonetheless, some readers might drive straight to Cortland, or
Binghamton, or Elmira, or Geneva, or Auburn where, thanks to Walton's
marketing genius, underpants are available made by child and slave
labor, costing ten cents less than anywhere else. We need cheap
necessities, yes, but what is necessary? What else is life for?

Malls are more than practical in this dismal way, they are America's
playpen. Reassured by TV that the purpose of life is shopping, an
American's prime rite of passage may be the first credit card purchase.
Workers earn dollars often by doing work they don't like, justifying
dull or unpleasant labor by spending credits to buy what they don't
need. Spending gives at least an illusion of power. And there's a lot
of pressure to do so: everything in the U.S. is subordinate to
shopping. Without money and ownership of the stuff with which to prove
you've got money, one has little status.

When big boxes are not abandoned (Wal-Mart closes less profitable
stores) they provide jobs, shifted from smaller stores that could not
compete. A Massachusetts study says a typical Wal-Mart adds 140 jobs
and destroys 230 higher-paying jobs (Donella Meadows, professor,
Dartmouth). Another case study, of Donaldsville, Louisiana, found store
closings jump from an average four per year to 18 per year during the
ten years after Wal-Mart came to town.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Wal-Mart proposed for
Ithaca in 1992 said, "Because there is no obvious source of unmet
retail demand by the local population... a greater portion of the
Wal-Mart's projected sales would need to be captured from existing area
stores" (p. 5).
As Ortega sees it, "[Wal-Mart's] success with bigger and bigger boxes
spawned the category-killer chains that continue to crush smaller
businesses and to ensure that every town eventually will have exactly
the same selection of books, videos, records, magazines, clothing,
food, toys, hardware, and everything else..." Ortega tells stories of
retailers improving their stores as recommended by consultants/offering
extra service, longer hours, goods Wal-Mart doesn't carry/but failing
anyway.

Ortega's main focus is Wal-Martas labor impact, with economic impact
secondary, but he seldom mentions environmental issues. This chain,
like McDonaldas, has become "a metaphor for the American dream run
amok," according to Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer from San
Francisco. Ortega quotes John Jarvis, an anti-Wal-Mart leader in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania: "The good thing about Wal-Mart was that it was
big enough, nasty enough, and aggressive enough to make the problem of
uncontrolled growth clear."
Nor is Ortegaas book a manual for opposing Wal-Mart. For that
we turn
again to Ithaca, which stopped Wal-Mart after a three-year campaign.
Ortega dedicates a chapter ("Bambi Beats Godzilla") to Ithaca and
related successful efforts. But these stories are more anecdotal than
instructive.
The Greenfield (MA) Community Preservation Coalition stopped Wal-Mart
by defying their city councilas 19-7 vote favoring Wal-Mart, to force a
referendum. They campaigned on the theme that "You can't buy small-town
life at a Wal-Mart. You can only lose it there," and they defeated
Wal-Mart 2,854 to 2,845.

Wal-Mart failed in Ithaca principally because of their special talent
for targeting outstanding natural areas (like the entrance to
Buttermilk Falls), and because of effective community organizing. The
Stop Wal-Mart group brought 190 people to public hearings, leaned on
the mayor during an election year, and threatened to give Wal-Mart
worse national publicity than it has encountered anywhere else.

Above all, Stop Wal-Mart relied on the gut instincts of people who care
deeply about Ithaca, who regard themselves more as creative producers
than as consumers, and who seek to preserve Ithaca's rare mix of big
city (many ethnic groups, talents, cultural activity) and small town
(surrounded by forest and seasons and waterfalls). The Citizen's
Planning Alliance (led by current mayoral candidate Dan Hoffman) arose
from this campaign, to ensure that the expansion of Ithacaas tax base
enhances rather than erodes Ithaca's social base.
Some
local politicians, dedicated fixedly to City Hall revenue alone,
continue to ignore these concerns. Mayor Cohen and much of the Council,
the most conservative in 30 years, appeal to our blandest
sensibilities. They would have us believe that Wal-Mart is Reality;
that this is a tough world and that there's no alternative but to
reduce the community base to enlarge the tax base.

But there are
alternative realities. Rather than pursuing the Wal-Marts, Wegmans and
K-Marts of the land, we could develop market niches for regional
manufacture, for regional sales of durable goods, for local
entertainment and employment, including worker ownership.

Ithaca
can be made rich by plugging leaks in the local economy. Food, fuel,
housing, transportation, medical care, solid waste, and every other
need can be met extensively by generating local networks and using new
technologies, rather than by chronic import. There are thousands of
jobs to be made here for us and our youngsters through this process.
You name it-- from salsa and pasta to clothes and furniture, from
nonprofit health clinics and medications, from superinsulation to wind
and solar power, from systematic recapture of student discards to
remanufacturing and flexible manufacturing networks-- we can develop
locally-controlled enterprise which serves us directly and exports as
well.

This genuine development, often referred to as "smart
growth," can be Ithaca's better destiny. Ithacans need not settle for
just another row of big boxes beside just another highway. We can
explore dynamic new directions, set examples, and make our town more
beautiful, safer, and in the long run economically more viable than
communities which have sacrificed their independence and diversity for
the false security offered by Wal-Mart.